


Cop Out

by rellkelltn87



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Sickfic (of sorts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 17:05:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19772653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87
Summary: Benson wakes up from a nightmare after eating a three-day-old candy bar she found in her car.





	Cop Out

Olivia Benson awakened to the sound of the shower running in the bathroom and the television blaring a children’s cartoon from the living room. “No-ahhhh!” she shouted, rubbing her spasming temples, then her heavy eyes. Her face ached with the weight of a thousand discarded ADAs; she remembered that she’d been sick for much of the previous night. “Lower the TV, now!”

“Fine!” Noah shouted back. “But it’s not that loud.”

“It is absolutely that loud, and if —”

“I lowered it!” 

She pressed the palm of her hand to her closed eyelids. When she heard footsteps from the bathroom, it took her a minute to register that they belonged to Rafael Barba — The Honorable Rafael Barba — Suffolk County Family Court judge and her romantic partner of almost two years.

She’d slept fitfully but had a ridiculously detailed dream. A dream full of details _ad nauseam_ , for lack of a better phrase.

Barba removed the towel he was wrapped in and started to get dressed.

Again, she needed a minute to process what she was seeing.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. “I was worried.”

“Better — better now,” she stammered. “Would you mind getting me a glass of —”

She turned and saw a glass of water waiting for her on the nightstand. Barba smiled and, pulling a polo shirt over his head but waiting a minute to take out his jeans, sat in the narrow space between Benson’s ribcage and the edge of the bed. He leaned over and kissed her forehead, then her lips, unsuccessfully masking a cringe. 

“I need to brush my teeth,” she said. 

“I’m clearly a bad influence on you.”

“How could you ever be a bad influence on me?” 

“You ate a three-day-old half-melted candy bar that Noah left in the car.”

“Oh,” she said, remembering, “oh, yeah. I had the strangest dream, Rafa, the _strangest_ dream.”

“Could not possibly be stranger than the time I dreamt I flipped the switch on an infant who was part of a custody battle where I was making a prosecutorial deal with the father.”

“Can you imagine? You’d have never been allowed to take the bench. You’d have been disbarred. But, what was strange was, my dream picked up after that, after the dream you told me about. Peter Stone was our new ADA, and I had to work with him for a year and a half. It felt so … real.”

“Peter Stone?” Barba asked, tilting his head to the side.

“The, uh, prosecutor. Wait, is there actually a prosecutor named Peter Stone or did I just dream that too?”

Barba laughed gently. “Sweetheart, Peter Stone is the name of the asshole who was all over the Internet and local news a few days ago.” Benson was still confused, so Barba continued: “He was waiting in line at a pizzeria on Staten Island, said he didn’t like the way the woman behind the counter looked at him, thought he deserved more respect or something, even though she was concentrating on getting the pizza out of the oven, and —”

“Oh. Oh, right,” Benson said, suddenly remembering. “The guy who wouldn’t stop ranting about how women wouldn’t date him. Carisi had to tackle him because he was screaming at Bella and the women behind her. He said Peter Stone didn’t seem like too much of a threat — just a cranky customer — until he started calling out specific women and ranting about how he thought victims were supposed to behave. _That’s_ where I got that name from.” After a beat, she added, “Certain parts of my dream make perfect sense now.”

She rose slowly out of bed, accepting Barba’s help standing up. “Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t apologize.” 

“I panicked for a minute. It took me a little while to get my bearings.”

“I know,” he said, using his fingers to brush a strand of hair away from her face. “At least we figured out last night it was the candy bar.”

“Right, I wouldn’t want you to think that you proposing marriage is what made me throw up seven times,” she said with a laugh.

“I didn’t officially propose,” he reminded her.

“You said I should take as much time as I needed to decide if I _want_ you to propose, Judge Barba. But given that I just dreamed a whole year-and-a-half worth of food-poisoned dreams, I think I’ve taken as much time as I need. My answer to both questions is yes.”


End file.
